Race training for all mental health staff

All NHS psychiatrists and mental health nurses are to be put through a national retraining programme to root out the racist attitudes that have undermined the treatment of black and ethnic minority patients, it was disclosed yesterday.

Ministers have accepted a recommendation of the inquiry into the death of David "Rocky" Bennett that training the 40,000-strong mental health workforce in "cultural competence" should become a priority for the service.

Mr Bennett, 38, a Jamaican-born Rastafarian and talented drummer, died at the Norvic secure centre in Norwich in 1998 after being held face down on the floor for 28 minutes by a restraint squad of at least four mental health nurses.

An inquiry under Sir John Blofeld, a retired high court judge, reported in February that his maltreatment was an example of discrimination against black mental health patients that amounted to institutional racism. Sir John called it a "festering abscess" that besmirched the good name of the NHS.

The government set up a black and minority ethnic steering group to push through a programme of reform. Rosie Winterton, health minister, and Lord Victor Adebowale, chief executive of the charity Turning Point, co-chaired its first meeting yesterday.

They decided that the issue was so serious that solutions could not be left to the discretion of local mental health trusts. Ministers accept that young black men are six times more likely than their white contemporaries to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. When undergoing treatment, they are more likely to get anti-psychotic drugs and less likely to be given psychological therapies.

About 35,000 mental health nurses, 3,000 consultant psychiatrists and 3,000 junior doctors will be retrained over the next few years. The group will decide shortly on what a programme of cultural competence should contain and which trainers are best equipped to provide it.

The Mental Health Act commission will undertake a survey to establish the ethnic background of inpatients and this will be used as the baseline to eradicate racial inequality.

The group also heard of plans to appoint 500 community development workers by 2006 to provide a bridge between NHS mental health services and patients. They will seek to address the fears of young black men who see psychiatric hospitals as centres of coercive and dangerous treatment.

The new staff will work with faith leaders and voluntary organisations to address the cause of these suspicions.

In a speech today to the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, Ms Winterton is expected to say: "For people with mental health problems, the Department of Health is committed to the largest and most comprehensive ever programme to improve black and minority ethnic mental health."

Sir Nigel Crisp, NHS chief executive, launched a 10-point action plan in February to improve race equality in the NHS. "He has asked all departmental and NHS leaders to give this work the personal leadership it needs and is bringing together an independent review panel, led by Trevor Phillips, chief executive of the Commission for Racial Equality, to check progress during 2004," Ms Winterton will say.

The report on Mr Bennett's death said: "We are told the Department of Health is determined to carry out the necessary improvements. We very much hope it will. But, in the view of the history, we reserve judgment about whether these good intentions will be translated into action... sufficient to cure this festering abscess which is at present a blot on the good name of the NHS."